This is gonna be a long one, so buckle up. And thank you in advance for reading my rant. I’d like to be able to help someone else but at the same time I just feel like I need to get this all out.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I feel like this isn’t addressed as much as it should be in the weight loss community. Solutions to people’s issues are always “try this diet” or “replace your binge food with a healthier food.” But I know, for a lot of us (NOT EVERYONE,) it isn’t about the food. I recently discovered that for me, that is the key.
My story: I have been overweight since childhood. I am currently a 29F 5’2” and 138lb. I started putting on weight around 10-13, around when my parents got divorced. My mother had mental health and drug issues and it was messy and a hard situation for all of us to go through. My highest weight was at 220lb at 16 years old. I honestly didn’t really know how big I was. I knew my weight was a problem but I was distracted by life, school, and my activities that I didn’t think much of it. I lost a decent amount in middle school and was a normal weight, but ended up putting a lot back on in my freshman year until I got to my highest weight. At that point I was in honors classes, playing 3 different instruments as first chair in 2 different bands, and in the marching band. I have always been intelligent and was focused on school. I met new friends, and I’ve always been an outgoing person so I started doing what they were doing. Skipping class and drinking. I still overate a lot and loved food but kind of switched that focus to drugs and drinking.
I met a friend who was starving herself to lose weight so I tried that and became addicted to that too. I dropped 100lb in less than 6 months and my mental health was at a serious low. I was starving myself, cutting myself, drinking and doing any drug that was offered. Anything to not feel what I was feeling and deal with the difficult emotions of losing my family and my mother, and my emotionally unavailable father. I ended up in a psychiatric hospital twice but that was a bandaid and didn’t really help my unwilling teenage self. I continued my bad behaviors into “adulthood.”
A couple weeks before my 22nd birthday I realized I didn’t want to live that life anymore and got serious help. I went to rehab. I went to 12 step meetings and that worked for a while (4years) but that was also a bandaid; not really addressing the real issue. But I got happier. I got a steady job, I got off the drugs, I made friends who were supportive. I gained weight. A lot of it. I went from maybe 115-190 pounds very quickly and inside I was still miserable. I just switched back to food and it was seen as ok because I wasn’t using drugs.
After a while I left the 12 step program (for a lot of unrelated reasons, another place and time for that) and just decided to live my life normally. But I STILL wasn’t addressing my issues but at this point it was subconscious. I didn’t HAVE any issues currently, why was I still depressed and anxious?? I did not know I had emotional eating issues because I didn’t consciously reach for food when I was upset. But that is exactly what I did. Fast forward a bit I decided to drink again because I always had a love in craft beer. And I was fine for a while. I got a job at a liquor store and quickly became the beer manager. It was during that time that a relationship ended and I had that realization again, I don’t want to live like this. So I tried to lose weight again. This time, I was browsing reddit and found this sub as well as others, and discovered CICO. I though, I could do this. And it was working. And it worked for a whole 60lb in 6 months. I was feeling good, exercising, eating healthy. I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I confirmed my previous thoughts; once I lose the weight it will solve my problems. But it didn’t. I started to hate my body. The loose skin, the weight I still had to lose. I hated myself. I wasn’t good enough. Every time I ate off plan I was a failure and a horrible human. Everything was purely aesthetic at this point, I was already a healthy weight.
My depression got really bad around November of 2017. But I didn’t want to address it. I just had to lose the rest of the weight, commit to the plan. CICO works, I know how to do it! Why can’t I just do it?? That began a year of yoyoing the same 10-20 pounds up and down. This horrible cycle I’ve been stuck in for a year of being happy and on plan and losing weight for a few months, then falling off track and gaining it all back and hating myself. It is miserable and I just wanted to be happy and love myself. I’d read people’s stories of loving the journey and you really have to love yourself the way you are while losing weight and blew it off because, how could I love myself in this body, with all these failures? If I just stick to my plan and get down to the weight I want I’ll be happy THEN! Which just made losing the weight harder.
In this time I also got a new job with a brewery in March of 2018. A large successful brewery. My first real job with a salary and benefits, that required a lot of hard work. I was over the moon, amazed that they picked me. I was ready to start this new chapter in life and become the best version of myself that I could be. Successful in every aspect of my life. Along with this job change came a lot of stress and anxiety. It was foreign territory for me. I was overwhelmed with the need to be good at everything I did and put a lot of pressure on myself. I was very hard on myself and the self-hatred just got worse.
September 2018 I got down to 128lb, my lowest weight on this journey. I was doing so much better. I had a horrible August and decided to get on medication for my depression and anxiety and it helped SO MUCH! I was finally getting healthy and doing it right all thanks to my healthy eating. But I still had not addressed my toxic relationship with food and alcohol. October is a busy work month for events, and I fell off track, drinking a lot and eating bar food every night. I was gaining weight and miserable again. Hating myself every morning when I woke up and then making those horrible decisions again that day. I stopped taking my medication regularly. This behavior continued into November and I just kept thinking what is wrong with me? Why can’t I just stick to the plan like I had done previously? To me, the solution was in the food diet. I really still at this point did not make the connection that I am an emotional eater, because for me it really is a subconscious action. I am not a binge eater and never have been, so I didn’t think it was a mental problem. I decided December is when I would get back on track, I just needed a new diet to get me back into it. I thought about the potato diet; yeah, I could do that, just potatoes! Or just whole food plant based. Or try intuitive eating!
I drive a lot for work so I decided to start listening to podcasts. I typed in “weight loss” and started listening to a few. Looking for a new diet or strategy to give me the magical answer that would keep me on track this time. And guess what? I found it. But not where I expected to. I found this one podcast by a weight loss coach and listened to a few, before stumbling on a client call that she did where she addressed her clients emotional eating. Everything she was saying made sense to me and it was like that lightbulb going off; that’s me! I AM an emotional eater, it just wasn’t exactly what I thought emotional eating was. Then from there I decided to search for emotional eating podcasts and finally found one that everything she said was like she was in my head and reading my thoughts. I felt like a weight had been lifted. I have finally figured myself out (at least a little.)
I know the work is just beginning and connecting with this podcast isn’t actually going to make me magically lose weight, but just over the course of a week I have already started changing my thinking. When I want that unhealthy food, or that coffee drink that I don’t need, I stop myself and think; why do I feel like I need this? Why emotions am I feeling right now? What emotions am I trying to get away from? What emotions am I trying to feel by consuming this? I discovered for me it wasn’t mostly about blocking negative emotions but rather inducing positive ones because I either felt nothing/boredness and wanted a boost or felt like I was happy and deserved a treat. It made me look back on the past year and when those months of overeating happened, was really when I was feeling the most stressed and depressed. Not necessarily in that exact moment after something happened, but in the days and weeks where I was stressed from work, or depressed about XYZ.
So thank you for reading my long story. I am no where near an expert on this but I really feel like this is something that will help me tremendously. I know the problem isn’t the food or even the extra fat on my body: it’s my mindset and mentality. My absence of self love, my depression, anxiety. I need to address my thoughts and work through them and be conscious of them, and not just focus on calories and the number on the scale. I was OBSESSED and stuck in this miserable cycle and now I see a light at the end of the tunnel. I know this will help me with my obsession with food and weight, and also alcohol, self love issues, and I feel like all other aspects of my life. My self confidence isn’t great right now but I am way more aware of it and the negative ways in which I talk to myself and I am determined to fix it. You really DO have to fix your mind before your body.
I know this is not how everyone is. I know some people it IS just weight. They got overweight by making bad food choices, change their food choices, lose weight, and live a healthier lifestyle. Or some people discover this on their journey and work on both at the same time. But it really was something I never even thought of before and I feel so optimistic about it that I really just had to share, in case someone else is feeling the same way, or stuck in the restrict/overeat cycle that I was in and just wants to break free.
I wanted to lose weight and change myself so I could love myself. That was always the goal. Now I realized I need to focus more on loving myself first. And if I can be happy and love myself at a healthy 138lb that would be great. But I do feel like without my compulsive overeating and overdrinking, and by making healthier lifestyle choices, I will be able to lose the last 10-30lb successfully because I love myself and want to treat my body right.
Again, thank you for reading and if you have any questions or would like to talk, please don’t hesitate to message me.
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